I have seen a lot of folks talk about how Tikki Tooki is weak. I'm pretty sure I agree, as I've used him by far the least in the beta (out of the four base gods, I haven't found Dracul, JJ, Pactmaker, Binlor, Earthmother, etc).

Rather than just talk about him being weak, let's see if we can figure out a way to make him more competitive with his divine colleagues.

Piety:

I have a really rough time gaining piety from this god. I don't seem to always get the piety for fighting dirty (is this still killing without being hit?). Or is it only lower level monsters? I have first strike, and one-hit monsters my own level and got no piety. Similarly a fireball then hit monster. I was sure using the first strike glyph to take a monster would count as dirty, but no. I end up with boatloads of piety from the other 3 gods, but not as much as I'd like from TT. I just went through a dungeon with TT, and while I didn't donate gold, I ended up earning a total of 74 piety (with 33 gold at the end that I could have converted). This meant that had I bought Poison, I couldn't have gotten any other boon without donating the gold! (This was an easy dungeon run just to remind myself of TT's specifics for this post, so I didn't need to donate the gold, so why not take it home?)

The Boons:

- Tribute - I guess this is nice, being able to get some piety for cash, but so far, even with the bank preparation, I rarely seem to have enough cash that this option is really viable. I'd almost always rather buy something from shops. A one time boon with a better conversion rate may be more tempting?

- Quicksilver - You know what might make this seem more worth it? If the supplied potion was one guaranteed dodge, rather than an increase in dodge chance.

- Reflexes - This one seems more worth it than Quicksilver to me, as I'm imagining myself using it before a boss fight, when I've already got the first strike boon, and getting free hits on the boss. I haven't actually made this happen yet, but that's what I imagine I'm doing. That requires 75 Piety though, and aside from the plant exploit, I have a rough time earning that much piety from TT

- Dodging - Easily the biggest reason that I dislike TT. I dislike the dodge mechanic in general. Pretty much everything else in the game is built on certainty, and then dodging comes in and throws in a die roll. Sure, in Alpha, I threw myself at a boss here or there when all my resources were exhausted, hoping I'd dodge and get the win. I didn't like it, even when it worked. Dodge to me is just the random free piety boosts in combats that I was going to win without it. I want some sort of control over dodge. I want a glyph/item that I can use to avoid the next attack (big mana cost, or consumable item). I guess then it turns into a more powerful version of CYDSTEPP. Maybe the dodge lowers my attack damage for the current or following attack? Maybe it leaves me more vulnerable to the next attack (temporary lowered resistances). I just really, really, really want dodging to turn into another cool tactical/strategic choice for the player rather than a throw of the dice.

- Poison - Amazing boon, particularly with the right class combo. Expensive though. Am I the only one having trouble earning piety from TT?

- First Strike - This one sounds awesome, but works out to be less useful than poison, in my mind. I look at both as ways to get xp bonuses from higher level monsters, and poison is more effective for this (as it works on monsters that have first strike). Poison is also useful on the boss, while first strike may save you, if you were one hit from success, but likely isn't the deciding factor. Not necessarily arguing for a removal of this boon, just maybe a cheapening of it relative to poison.

General Thoughts:

- I haven't found the Witch in the east yet (seriously, where is she?), but I wonder if those potion boons will get even less appealing once I get her.

- Based upon the unlocking quest, Tikki Tooki likes to trick people. I wonder if that can be worked into a boon somehow? Fool the enemy into some sort of debuffed state? Switch an (or all?) enemy's physical/magic resists (or damage types)?

Sorry if I babbled on too long, hope something in here was interesting to someone!

It feels to me like Tikki Tooki would like the new Slow debuff. Slowing an enemy grants piety; maybe a high cost boon that slows all enemies. Maybe attacking a slowed enemy gives you 2x to your dodge rate?

platypotamus wrote:- I haven't found the Witch in the east yet (seriously, where is she?), but I wonder if those potion boons will get even less appealing once I get her.

Don't worry, it won't, because her potions are super niche. They deal with curing poison/mana burn and she allows you to bring in one of them, which means it's either useless because there's none of those enemies, useless because there are TOO many of those enemies or in the rare case that you only have to kill a powerful mana-burner, moderately useful if you even remember you had the potion.

It seems to me that his abilities don't quite combo as well as, say, Taurog or Glowing Guardian (he grants poison, which is an ability for enemies you can't kill in one hit, but gets angry if you get hit too much)

This is really left field, but maybe make his "gambling" side even -stronger-: there are very few features in the game that benefit the player that risks getting killed. (edit: yes I wrote all this without remembering Jehora) A set of abilities for such a god could be:

- high stakes: grants 1 initial piety for each 10 gold you're using on this run- grants piety when the RNG is used (dodging damage, monsters blinking, etc)- docks piety when player wears items that prevent debuffs or gains death protection

Gamble: Give 10 gold, receive 0 gold or 15 gold back, plus some piety.Tinker: Exchanges a potion for a random, different potion.Dodging: Either increase the dodging bonus, or make this repeatable.Poison: Reduce piety use, but make attacks only have a chance to deal poison status.First Strike: Same as poison. Attacks have a chance to deal extra damage as well.Masquerade: Changes your class to a random, different class (obviously only usable when you're not using a class that is also a race). Loses old class benefits, gains new class benefits (except for "starts the dungeon with" ones)

Last edited by Zaratustra on Sun Aug 07, 2011 12:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The problem I see with Tikki Tooki is the difficult time gaining piety with him, outside of specific classes, and even those classes often need the right item load-out for him to work. Here's my suggestions:

Boons:- Tribute: Costs 10 gold, get 15 piety. Repeatable, but each use reduces the piety gained by 5, minimum of 1 piety.- Reflexes: Costs 25 piety, treats you as 2 levels higher for the purpose of determining whether you strike first.- Quicksilver: The old Reflexes boon, but called Quicksilver, because Quicksilver makes more sense for a name for this ability anyway, and Reflexes makes more sense for the above ability.- Dodging: As is.- Poison: As is.- First Strike: Costs 50 piety, gives you permanent first strike, removes first strike from all enemies. Gives you 10 gold.

Obviously, this would probably need some balancing, but my hope was to make Tikki Tooki viable for more classes while staying relatively true to his history. First Strike and Reflexes are a little redundant, but I think that's okay as it lets the player decide whether to save up directly for First Strike or get Reflexes first.

Were you expecting a coherent message? Alweth does not deal with such trifles. Ignore him or watch the thread get locked!

The problem with TT is that he is somewhat focused on dodging (2 of 5 boons), which is random. At all but the lowest levels of DD play people plan out how they are going to kill an enemy, relying on getting the results they expect. 20% dodging is not something you can rely on, and 5% dodging is completely irrelevant. It's a nice bonus when it works, but it doesn't let you do anything you couldn't do without dodging. This is actually fine, but the bonus is currently too small IMO, and the dodging related TT boons offer way too little for their piety cost.

My balance suggestions for TT, based on bringing the other boons in line with first strike and poison in terms of bang-for-buck:

Sacrifice is great, no changes needed. I think a lot of people don't realize that you can just feed the 10 gold TT gives you for boons back to him for piety. This solves most of the TT piety problems. If people would rather buy items instead or carry the gold out of the dungeon with them that is their choice. You spend 10 piety on getting gold with every boon, what you do with that is your choice. TT is kind enough to give you a refund if you don't want it.

Quicksilver changed to 15% from 5%. This will probably let you dodge once in a regular length (5 hits) boss fight, with no guarantee except in very long fights or with high base dodge, and a chance for more if you get lucky and it triggers early (and you are willing to pay for another potion). An okay trade for 12 piety (after offering the 10 gold you got and getting +3 from the dodge) and a potion. Probably still weak in regular fights because it can trigger when you don't need it or not trigger when you need it, and there are few fights worth using a potion for.

Reflex is already great. Taurog's extra hit costs 25 piety and you need all previous boons, so getting an extra hit for 15 piety, a potion and 3 mana for first strike is great for chars that don't rely on potions much. Reflex conflicts a little with dodging (mana waste if you don't have innate first strike), but I guess that is by design.

Dodge: make repeatable, starts at giving 10% dodge, gives 2% less per repeat (3% less if overpowered). This is powerful in long fights, but also very unreliable compared to first strike and poison. You would get 18% (17%) dodge for 30 piety, 24% (21%) for 45 piety. 40 piety gets you first strike, which is a guaranteed extra hit in most cases. In most fights against higher level enemies you can get hit once, so this gets you a 24% chance for an extra hit and some piety. Nothing special at all. Even in long fights this will usually give you less bang for your buck than getting first strike. The maximum dodge you could get from this boon with the formula I suggested is 32% (25%), which would put rogues at a very useful 52% (45%) dodge.

Poison and first strike are fine IMO.

With the suggested buff to dodging I think additional piety will not be needed, especially when people realize boons actually cost 15 or 40 piety and not 25/50.

Galefury wrote:The problem with TT is that he is somewhat focused on dodging (2 of 5 boons), which is random. At all but the lowest levels of DD play people plan out how they are going to kill an enemy, relying on getting the results they expect. 20% dodging is not something you can rely on, and 5% dodging is completely irrelevant. It's a nice bonus when it works, but it doesn't let you do anything you couldn't do without dodging. This is actually fine, but the bonus is currently too small IMO, and the dodging related TT boons offer way too little for their piety cost.

I pretty much agree with this post. The exception being that my solution to changing the dodge boon would be making the effect similar to the quicksilver potion. In other words, you would permanently have a dodge bonus that would stack by 5% every time you were hit and reset (to 5%) every time you dodged. Or maybe in increments of 10% if that's still too weak.

[stupid theorycrafting]There's no way anyone is gonna go warlord and worship Tikki Tooki (because Tikki Tooki hates when you "nearly die"). But, Tikki Tooki likes playing with potions, and he also likes helping you defeat an enemy faster than he "gets bored". So, what if one of his boon was granting Courageous? (The boon could be called "heart of gold". Heh.)

I have no idea which boon this could replace though, all of the ones that exist already seem to make more sense.[/stupid theorycrafting]

We have been looking at rebalancing Tikki Tooki a little bit. He is actually quite a bit easier to earn piety with than you guys have pointed out so far (for instance, he does reward teleportation) but his first strike boon is rather arb right now: Either you have it anyway from playing a rogue, or you're not really needing it because you have the glyph, or you simply have it situationally anyway, especially with Tikki's reduced hit-count punishment condition.

Also, just finished changing quicksilver potions to give you 10% per hit. And you guys have NO IDEA how cool the Witch is going to get